


Mind the Gap, Please

by tjs_whatnot



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Comedy, Order of the Phoenix - Freeform, Post-War, Wizarding Wars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-07-26
Updated: 2008-07-26
Packaged: 2018-10-27 07:54:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10804980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tjs_whatnot/pseuds/tjs_whatnot
Summary: With Albus Dumbledore as his tour guide Severus Snape is faced with seven choices of where to spend eternity…





	Mind the Gap, Please

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Annie, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [The Quidditch Pitch](http://fanlore.org/wiki/The_Quidditch_Pitch), which went offline in 2015 when the hosting expired, at a time I was not able to renew it. I contacted Open Doors, hoping to preserve the archive using an old backup, and began importing these works as an Open Doors-approved project in April 2017. Open Doors e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact us using the e-mail address on [The Quidditch Pitch collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/thequidditchpitch/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** First three paragraphs in italics are taken directly from Deathly Hallows, with one slight modification.

  
_He lay facedown, listening to the silence. He was perfectly alone. Nobody was watching. Nobody else was there. He was not perfectly sure that he was there himself._

_A long time later, or maybe no time at all, it came to him that he must exist, must be more than disembodied thought, because he was lying, definitely lying on some surface. Therefore, he had a sense of touch, and the thing against which he lay existed, too._

_Almost as soon as he had reached this conclusion, Severus became conscious that he was naked. This did not concern him, but it did intrigue him slightly._

It had been a long time since he’d been comfortable in his own skin, let alone without any fabrics covering it. It felt oddly refreshing, as if a burden had been lifted.

He tested his eyes next and found that, along with touch, there was sight, too. Not much to look at, he thought as he squinted against the bright, iridescent fog, but still, it was something.

Next, he tested himself for both physicality and bodily ache. Relieved that he was both a solid mass and pain-free, he attempted to stand up. Again, he was shocked by the refreshing lightness. However, when he looked down at his emasculated body, he shivered with revulsion.

_What is this new hell?_ he thought to himself.

“No son, not hell. This is your afterlife. You are seeing your perception of yourself, nothing more.”

Severus spun around looking for the source of the voice. He knew that voice. He wanted nothing more than to throttle the body connected to that voice.

“Well, perhaps, I could have some clothes to cover this… _perception_.”

“As you wish.” The voice answered, and, suddenly through the sparkling fog, strode Albus Dumbledore. His hair and beard were blindingly white, as were his robes. In his hand, he had a long, luxuriant black robe that he draped over Severus’ pathetic shoulders.

Once again looking at Albus and the golden aura around him, Severus smirked. “Don’t you think you are taking this _God_ complex a bit too far?”

Albus threw back his head and laughed one of those deep, gleeful laughs that had always rankled Severus—how could anyone get _that_ much enjoyment out of anything?

“Once again child, this is your afterlife. This is your perception.”

_Oh lord_ , Severus thought drily.

“Yes?” Albus answered.

“Stop doing that. Get out of my head.”

“As you wish.”

_Git_. Severus tested, and although he thought he saw Albus fight a smile, the old man didn’t respond.

“Where are we?” Severus asked.

Albus looked around. “I rather hoped you’d be able to tell me.”

As he had spoken the words, the fog began to take shape. “It looks like the… the London Underground?” Severus said, amazed. For they truly did seem to be standing in a deserted tube station, and though he hadn’t been in it for ages, not since his teens when he and Lily would run away to the city for adventure, it looked just as it had then.

_Oh right, this is my afterlife_ , Severus reminded himself.

“Is it really?” Albus said, amazed as well. “I knew this thing would come in handy someday.” He pulled up his robes to show the scar on his right leg, above the knee, of the London Underground. “It looks as if we are right here,” he pointed to a freckle.

Just then, a train pulled into the station. “Shall we go?” Dumbledore asked.

“Go where?”

“Well, it looks as if it is entirely your choice dear boy.”

_My choice._

They walked to the opened door. “Mind the gap, please,” a disembodied voice sounded. “Next stop, Severus Snape’s Childhood.”

Severus stopped walking. No, this really is hell.

Albus placed a reassuring hand on Severus’ shoulder.

“Please tell me this is not some sort of the seven-levels-of-hell afterlife.”

“I don’t really know what this afterlife is; everyone’s is different.”

“And yours is playing God and giving vague answers to important questions?” Severus snapped.

“Don’t be ridiculous. In my afterlife, I am on a cloud somewhere discussing art and philosophy with Leonardo and Frederick. As I have said, this is _your_ afterlife. It would seem though that we will be making a few stops on the Severus Snape Afterlife Tour.”

“You make it sound like a holiday. Maybe we should charge admission.”

Dumbledore laughed. “Perhaps we should, or at the very least, have treats. Lemon drop?”

He offered Severus one of his favorite sweets. “No, thank you.” They always left a horrible sugary sweet taste in Severus’ mouth.

They rode the tube in silence after that. It seemed hours before they came to a stop. Severus wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to get out and wondered what would happen if he didn’t. Would he just go on? Go on where?

With a sigh, he rose to his feet with Albus, and they made their way to a brightly lit day and a familiar playground.

Together, they made their way to the middle of the playground where a young boy, who could only be Severus Snape at nine, sat on a swing set, lazily pushing himself back and forth on the rickety-chained seat. They didn’t hear the arrival of other children, but the young Severus did; he brightened and straightened up.

The two girls slowed when they saw him. He got off the swing and went to them. “Hello, my name is Severus; nice to meet you.”

The older Severus looked confusedly from the children to Albus and back. “That’s not how it happened. I didn’t approach them like that.”

Albus watched the children interact. The older girl, laughed cruelly at the name, stuck her nose in the air after taking one look at his shabby clothes and walked to the farthest swing. The younger girl, obviously mimicking adults, stuck out her hand and said, “I’m Lily Evans, and that is my sister Petunia.”

“What’s going on?” Severus asked Dumbledore. “This isn’t right.”

“I’m not sure. However, if I had to guess, I would say that you are seeing a past that would have been if you knew then what you know now. Are there things that happened the first time you meet her that you would have done differently?”

Severus thought back to his memory of this event. Saw himself hiding in a bush, watching, coveting, and hungering for her friendship. Maybe that had been his mistake from the beginning. Maybe worshiping her from afar really had led him to their destruction.

Curious now, he went and investigated the child that he was. Not only his approach was different, but his looks and manner seemed different as well. Bending down and really examining this boy, he saw that his eyes seemed to have more life to them. While he still had the look of misuse and poverty — sallow skin, lank hair that suggested infrequent opportunity for grooming and dark circles under his adolescent eyes that suggested sleepless nights and guardedness — he now saw a newly developed defiance there as well.

They watched Lily and young Severus swing together. There was no talking of magic or showing of magical skill, but there was an arrangement to meet back at the playground the next day. Watching his younger self walk away, Severus was curious to where he would go and what they would find when they got there. Would his home life be dramatically different as well?

Severus and Albus followed the boy down the lane. Severus was shocked when he saw himself walk into a shop and, while strolling down the aisles, nick some eggs, a stick of butter and a few rolls. The shopkeeper looked suspicious of the boy, but couldn’t detect the thievery and so reluctantly rang up the penny candy the young boy purchased and watched him walk out.

“I would have never done that,” Severus whispered, as he watched the boy walk past a trash bin and deposit the wrapper of the sweet as he did. “I’d more likely dig through the rubbish than steal.”

“Could it be that this new Severus has more of his adult’s view of right and wrong when it comes to self preservation and dignity?” Albus asked.

“How very Slytherin of me.”

“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”

Severus didn’t comment; he just continued to follow his much braver doppelganger. However, when the men turned the corner to the warehouse district that would lead home, it and the boy were nowhere to be found. Instead there was another tube station.

“Now what?” Severus asked.

“I guess we go onto the next stop.”

Severus looked behind him again, but it was just the station.

_So much for choices._

“Mind the gap, please. Next stop, Severus Snape’s Revenge.”

Perking up, Severus walked into the tube. This was an afterlife he could fully support.

It was another long, silent ride, and when the stopped, he once again recognized his surroundings.

“We had to ride this tube all this time to end up on the same block that we were heading to way back there?” Severus asked, incensed.

Laughing, Albus said, “You have somewhere pressing to be?”

Severus scowled and stepped out of the train with Albus at his heels.

They heard the shriek of a man that sounded as if he were being ripped limb from limb in the house before them. Severus’ childhood home.

“Shall we go in?” Albus asked.

Severus swallowed, suddenly wishing for one of those sweets his former employer had offered. This was going to be quite a show!

“As you wish,” Albus said, handing Severus a lemon drop.

“Right, I forgot.”

They walked up the rickety steps of the last place Severus ever thought he would want to be. The room was dark, and there was an oppressive heat. Severus saw himself before he saw anything else. The raw power emanating from his doppelganger drew his eyes immediately to where he sat reclining in a corner. He was about the age Severus had been at death, perhaps a bit younger, and the fire that burned in his eyes and the long fingers steepled under his chin gave him a sinister look that the dead Severus could only envy.

Following the man’s eyes, Severus swallowed his lemon drop. There, in the opposite corner, was his father, Tobias Snape, the bane of his childhood existence and the person he had been running from his whole life. His father’s eyes were pleading, and there were three hooded figures circling him, taking turns putting out their cigarettes along his forearms as he screamed in agony.

Severus pulled up his own sleeve to compare scars and see if they had punished his father enough. It was then Severus discovered that his scars were no longer there, neither was his Dark Mark.

“Some pains don’t survive death,” Albus answered for him.

Severus didn’t get to think on that statement, for right after uttering it, they heard a whimpering coming from the next room over. They followed the sound and went from the sitting room of Severus’ home to the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts.

In the clearing, they found a new crowd, this one of students. Judging by the hairstyles and clothes, Severus reasoned that they had stepped into the ’70s. The circle of people were laughing and pointing but completely obscuring whatever the spectacle was. When Severus and Albus made their way past the students, who got out of their way without a look, Severus actually laughed out loud.

“This we _definitely_ could have sold tickets to.”

Before them, two boys struggled against the ropes that secured them to their chairs. There were blindfolds covering their eyes, and they were stripped down to their soiled pants. Covered with honey, they both had Kneazles circling around them, licking their lips.

Albus looked as if he were trying not to judge; Severus was trying not to wet himself with glee.

“Oh come on; that’s just funny.”

“If you say so.”

“Oh yes, I forgot. Those are your favorites, your little minions-in-training, and they, of course, have done nothing wrong and are completely blameless.”

The Kneazles had pounced, and Severus’ attention was taken for a moment of frivolous enjoyment. He didn’t notice at first that Albus had fallen to his knees.

“Severus, I am so sorry. I have used and disappointed you, and I didn’t see what my own prejudices and favoritism were doing to my students and my… my friends.”

Watching Albus grovel for his forgiveness was almost as satisfying as watching Sirius and James being molested by wildlife. He truly could have sat there all afternoon and feasted on the bounty of revenge scenarios. Of course though, it didn’t last. The scene shimmered and faded, and too soon, Severus found himself alone with Albus in a tube station.

“Was that good for you?” Albus asked.

Severus ignored him and walked toward the train.

“Mind the gap, please. Next stop, Severus Snape’s Solitude.”

Severus got comfortable on the oddly sticky, orange, plastic seat and wondered what the next stop would entail. They came to a halt and he anxiously stepped out. _Now this is heaven_ , he thought as he stood in a well-lit, spacious room with rows and rows of books and in the middle, a plush, suede settee with a stack of tomes beside it and a bottle of brandy sitting on the table, a glass of the dark amber liquid already breathing in a snifter.

Severus walked around the room awestruck, going from aisle of aisle of books, each more intriguing and enticing then the next.

“It isn’t a cloud communing with the greatest minds of our time, but this is a close second,” Albus said.

Severus wasn’t listening. He had discovered a rare manuscript of ancient and extinct herbs used for creating potent potions. Finding the sofa, he sank down into it and was amazed by the feeling of being wrapped up, as it conformed to his shape and became a second skin.

Severus forgot where he was as he become engrossed in reading. It wasn’t long though that he heard a clearing of a throat. Looking up irritated, he was shocked to realize he was once again sitting in a tube station.

“This is becoming tedious,” he said with a groan, rising once again to his feet and walking to the train.

“Mind the gap, please. Next stop, Severus Snape’s Friendships.”

“My what?” Severus asked.

“You can think of no one in life that you wouldn’t enjoy continued friendship with now?” Albus asked.

“Nothing we didn’t just leave.”

Albus laughed. “Books are great companions, I do agree with you, but there has to be more.”

Severus shrugged. He supposed, but whom would he choose to spend all of eternity talking to?

When they stopped and the doors were opened up, they weren’t deposited on a street or alleyway, but into a rather loud pub. Severus was sure they were at the wrong stop. Crowds had never really been his thing.

They walked through the crowd that thinned out as they got farther in. In the middle of the pub, there was a single table and seated at it was Remus Lupin.

Severus really started to think that he had gotten off at the wrong stop now, but there was an even more pressing concern. “I thought the afterlife is for people who have died.”

Albus’ eyes lost their sparkle. “You think you are the only one this war claimed?”

Severus looked back at the man at the table. Looking around to see where his doppelganger was, Severus couldn’t see any.

“Severus, over here,” Remus called, looking right at the Severus who had just entered.

Confused, Severus looked from Albus to Remus. Albus shrugged and walked away to the counter at the other side of the bar.

Severus approached the table cautiously. “You can see me?”

“Of course I can.”

“How long have you been dead?”

“Died at Hogwarts. You?”

“Shrieking Shack.”

“Really? Maybe you’d always been meant to die there.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps I’ve been living on borrowed time since then.”

“Would you like to join me?” Remus asked, indicating one of the empty seats. Severus didn’t have anywhere else to go. The train was gone, and Albus seemed to have disappeared as well.

“Thank you.”

As they talked, Severus was shocked by how easy it was. They had a bit of shared history, but there was so much about each other that they didn’t know. Not only did they both have traumatic childhoods, but they both shared many of the same views about what it meant to have survived it. Besides, they both seemed to have had that experience on first entering their death of having a weight lifted.

“This is nice,” Remus said, echoing Severus’ thoughts so that he wondered if Remus, too, could read his mind. “I wonder if we could have been friends in life, if we would have made different choices as children.”

“I can only imagine how life would have been different without Marauders or Death Eaters.”

“That is an interesting thought,” said Remus. “I think we would have searched out others like them. I can’t speak for you, of course, but I imagine that we, at that age, needed someone to follow; someone stronger who could pull the introverted loner out of us.”

_Yes, definitely reading my mind_ , thought Severus.

“So, how do you think this works? Do you think I’m in your afterlife or you’re in mine?”

“I don’t know. This is the first time it’s actually been me interacting and not some other version of me,” Remus said.

“Me too. Let me guess, you’re stuck on a tube with Dumbledore?”

“No tube, but definitely Dumbledore.”

They both grinned.

“You mind if I join you?” someone asked standing in front of them.

Severus wasn’t even aware he had a heart anymore until he felt it jump to his throat.

“Lily.”

“Severus, Remus.” She didn’t wait for an invitation and pulled out a chair. Severus couldn’t stop staring at her. However, the moment she sat down and looked toward him, the scene flickered and changed.

“No!” Severus growled.

There was yet another tube station and yet again it was just him and Dumbledore. “What is the purpose of these little glimpses?” Severus asked, thoroughly annoyed.

“If you didn’t have all the options presented to you, then what kind of choice would it be?” Albus said in his best sage-like voice.

“So, at the end of this, I will get to choose the afterlife I want to live?”

“That seems to me to be the point of this.”

Severus thought about all the places they had visited so far: a new childhood where he got to live a different life, revenge, solitude, camaraderie and whatever came next. He would have to choose one for eternity? That seemed hardly fair. _Right, this is after all_ your _afterlife, Severus_ , he thought to himself. When had life ever been fair to him? Why should his afterlife be any different?

“I’m sorry,” Albus said.

“For what?” Severus asked, forgetting that the old man was more than likely hearing his thoughts.

“I’m sorry for any part I played in you feeling the way you do about life, or the lack of it.”

Severus studied him, waiting for a punch line. Albus looked more sincere then Severus had ever seen him. “What did you always say, Albus? A man can only blame others for bad life choices for so long?”

Albus smiled and accepted the olive branch. Severus walked toward the tube and noticed with a pause that his shadow seemed to have filled out a bit.

“Mind the gap, please. Next stop, The Power of Severus Snape.”

“What?” they both said together.

Severus could hardly stay still waiting for the tube to come to a stop. Oddly, it wasn’t desire that urged him out the door, but curiosity: What did power even look like?

Dark, cold wind ripped their clothes as they stepped off the tube into the moonless, starless night. There was a whispering in the blind distance that sounded like hissing. They made their way slowly forward and stopped when they made out what the sound really was, “Ssssseverusssss, Sssssseverusssssss.”

“I could really get used to this,” Severus said to Albus, who really wasn’t laughing anymore. Severus wasn’t really trying to be humorous, but the scene was too surreal to believe. Especially when the torches were lit, and there, sitting on a throne was the Severus Snape that he always envisioned while hiding in his closet back home.

His hair, instead of stringy and greasy ,was shiny and luxuriant; his nose, instead of hooked and long, was masculine and commanding; his black, beady eyes, penetrating and potent. He sat on the throne, muscles bulging and power oozing from every pore.

“Is this a joke?” Severus asked.

“Is this not what you thought power would look like?”

“Not at all.”

“Well, if you really are that powerful, change the perception.”

“Right,” Severus said and snapped his fingers. Instantly the scene changed to… nothing. Nothing for as long as they eye could see.

“Well, this is different,” Albus said.

“This is nothing.”

“It _is_ something. You changed your reality.”

“Yes, but to what?”

Albus looked around at the nothing and shrugged. “It’s a work in progress.”

“Of course it is.”

Giving him a sad smile, Albus said, “Shall we?”

Severus snapped his fingers again, and the tube station appeared around them.

“Mind the gap, please. Next stop, Severus Snape’s Intellectual Passion.”

Severus was growing weary of this, but knew enough about magical numbers of importance to know that they were almost done with this game. For once, he wasn’t the least bit surprised when they stepped off the tube this time and walked into an apothecary.

The Severus in this stop was very much like the Severus he had been. The Severus who cared more about the mind then the body, his clothes were shabby, this hair unkempt, but the passion in his searching eyes was intense. Frantically, he rummaged the shelves for ingredients, finding what he needed.

Then they left the store and were in a laboratory in a blink of an eye. It was the kind of laboratory that could only be found in a fantasy. The walls were filled with all sorts of arcane and extinct ingredients, and cauldron after cauldron of every shape and size were at his disposal. Then in a swirl of color, they were gone from the lab and were in a class full of students—all their pubescent eyes glued to him at the front of the room.

“Dunderheads? I can spend my afterlife with dunderheads? Oh joy.”

Albus laughed. “Dunderheads thirsty to learn. Look at them.”

They did look eager; one could even say _attentive_.

“Perhaps.”

“This wouldn’t be so bad?”

Severus didn’t hear him; he was scanning the room for a head of messy hair and a pair of glasses. The only flaw would be _that pupil_ for eternity. However, the room dissolved before he got through investigating.

Once again, the brightly lit, abandoned tube station surrounded them. Severus was resigned now and moved toward the tube; Albus followed silently.

“Mind the gap, please. Next stop, Severus Snape’s Physical Passions.”

Severus blushed, and when the train stopped in no time at all, Albus said, “I think I’ll wait out here, thanks.”

Relieved, but still horrified, Severus walked out of the tube. He was in a luxurious hallway with doors on either side. It looked vaguely like the Leaky Cauldron, if the inn ever spruced itself up. He didn’t know how he knew which door was the right one, but he stopped at the third door on the right and turned the knob.

This was definitely the right door. There he was shirtless, standing behind Lily, slowly kissing his way down her naked back. His hands encircled her and his fingers lightly teased her breasts before working their way down to remove her skirt.

Severus couldn’t move, couldn’t turn away. The building could happily burn to the ground, and he would still be there, clutching that door, transfixed by his other self and the only reward he wanted in life.

While he watched, he observed the slight variants, not only in himself, but in Lily, too. Part of what he was seeing was very much like all those fantasies he had in the cold, lonely rooms of his teens. There were things, though, that he had never imagined. The way she looked at this Severus, who had those same eyes that he had observed in the first tube stop. The tenderness and devotion she bestowed on him and the reverence instead of worship that he returned.

It all made sense to him finally. The reason for this entire journey.

He closed the door right as they were reaching their completion and went down the hall the way he had come. The tube station was right where he had left it. Albus paced before the empty platform, twirling his beard.

He must have read Severus’ eyes, for his own twinkled madly. “So, you have made your choice.”

“Yes, I’m ready to live again.”

The train pulled into the station.

“You take this one. I’ll take the next,” Albus said. There were so many things Severus wanted to say to the man, but he didn’t know where to begin. “Later, Severus. We will have our whole afterlife. Go. Live.”

Severus nodded and walked to the tube, not looking back.

“Mind the gap, please. Next stop…”  


* * *


End file.
